Kitchen Cabinet Refacing Cost Calculator
Kitchen cabinet refacing costs about $7,913 in Atlanta for a kitchen of 20 doors and 9 drawer fronts — $273 a front, which is the unit this trade quotes in. The number worth carrying away is the comparison: that is 99% of new stock cabinets and 34% of custom ones. Refacing saves a great deal against an expensive kitchen and almost nothing against an ordinary one, and this page computes both from the same model.
Estimate the cost for your home
Estimated cost to reface the cabinets
$8,399
typical · range $5,790 to $11,008 · 29 doors and drawer fronts · $290 each · 51 trade hours
Labour priced at national wages. Enter a ZIP code to price it for your area. 64% of this figure comes from modelled material prices — each line shows its own uncertainty.
Priced from bls.gov Aug 2026osha.gov Aug 2026and 1 more, all listed below
The one input that changes the answer for you.
A sprayed finish on a stable core that will not move with the seasons the way timber does, so the paint does not crack at the joints. The commonest choice for a flat or shaker door today.
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The figure above is already calculated. Each step just makes it more yours, and you can stop at any of them.
Refacing against new cabinets, at every grade
Both numbers come out of the same model, for a kitchen of the same size. Whoever sells refacing compares it against the expensive end.
| Instead, new cabinets | Would cost | Refacing is |
|---|---|---|
| Ready to assemble (flat pack) | $7,881 | 107%costs $518 more |
| Stock, assembled | $8,443 | 99%saves $44 |
| Semi-custom | $12,693 | 66%saves $4,294 |
| Custom, built to the room | $24,093 | 35%saves $15,694 |
Read the stock row first, because it is the comparison nobody makes: refacing costs 99% of new stock cabinets, a saving of $44. Against a brand-new kitchen of ordinary quality there is essentially nothing in it. Where refacing genuinely wins is against semi-custom and custom, and where it wins for reasons that are not money: your countertop stays, your plumbing is never touched, and you keep a working kitchen for the three or four days it takes instead of losing it for a fortnight.
| Line item | Qty | Cost | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Take off the old doors and prepare the frames0.2 h per front + 0.2 h per linear foot of frame | 11hour | $622–$668 | sourced |
| Painted MDF doors and drawer frontsdoor equivalents where the style is painted-mdf | 25.4door equivalent | $1,981–$4,826 | estimated±42% |
| Matching veneer for the face frames and end panelslinear feet of exposed face frame | 26linear ft | $468–$1,248 | estimated±45% |
| Fit the veneer, hang the doors and set the gaps0.9 h per door + 0.6 h per drawer front + 0.5 h per linear foot of veneer | 36.4hour | $2,058–$2,211 | sourced |
| New soft-close hingesone per door where soft-close hinges are fitted | 20door | $200–$560 | estimated±47% |
| Knobs and pullsone per handle | 29piece | $203–$1,102 | estimated±69% |
| Drill and fit the handles0.12 hours per handle | 3.5hour | $198–$213 | sourced |
| Dust protection, caulk and final clean1 per job | 1job | $60–$180 | estimated±50% |
| Total | $5,790–$11,008 | ±31% |
Where these numbers come from
- How the comparison is calculated
- Both sides come out of this site’s own models rather than from anybody’s marketing. The refacing figure is the line items on this page; the replacement figure is our kitchen cabinet installation calculator run on a kitchen with the same number of fronts, including taking the old cabinets out, the moulding and the handles. They share the same BLS wage data and the same regional adjustment, so the ratio between them means something. Change the door count or the door material and both sides move together, which is the point.
- Why the door is the unit here
- A cabinet fitter quotes by the linear foot because that is what gets hung. A refacer quotes by the door and drawer front because that is what gets made: every one is cut to an opening you already have, so every one is a different size and none can be reordered from a catalogue. It is worth going and counting yours before asking for a quote — it takes two minutes and it is the number the quote will be built from. A typical 20 linear foot kitchen has about 20 doors and 9 drawers.
- Labour rates by area
- BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, for carpenters, adjusted to your metropolitan area. Retrieved 2026-08-20. Benefit load from BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation. The hours — 0.9 a door, 0.6 a drawer front and 0.5 a linear foot of veneer — are our estimate. Hanging is the slow part: new doors on new hinges are adjusted in three axes until every gap in the run matches.
- The sanding happens in your kitchen
- Unlike new cabinets, which arrive finished, refacing abrades the existing face frames in place so the veneer will stick. OSHA, Wood dust hazards records wood dust as classified by the NTP as known to be a human carcinogen, and that page notes irritant effects on eyes, nose and throat alongside pulmonary function impairment. It happens in the room you cook in, so containment and extraction belong in the quote rather than in the small print. Retrieved 2026-08-23.
- And in a house built before 1978
- That same sanding puts a refacing job far above the minor-repair threshold in EPA, Lead Renovation, Repair and Painting Program, so paid work has to be done by an EPA lead-safe certified firm with containment, HEPA cleaning and a cleaning verification. It takes this kitchen from $7,913 to $8,403. It is the single most commonly omitted line in a refacing quote for an older house, and a firm that does not raise it is telling you something. Retrieved 2026-08-22.
- What the door material changes
- From $6,922 in thermofoil to $10,160 in solid wood on the same kitchen. Thermofoil is a vinyl film over MDF: cheapest, wipes clean, and it delaminates at the corners if it lives beside an oven or a kettle. Solid wood is the only one you can sand back and refinish in ten years, and it moves with humidity, which is why a raised panel is built to float in its frame. Painted MDF sits in between and is what most people actually choose, because it takes a sprayed finish without cracking at the joints the way timber does.
- The comparison table, in one line
- Refacing is 109% of flat pack (ready to assemble (flat pack)), 99% of assembled stock, 65% of semi-custom and 34% of custom. Read those four numbers before reading any brochure, and note which one the brochure chose.
- Material prices
- Modelled estimates, not sourced prices. No public, machine-readable source of US residential material prices exists, and we would rather say so than pretend otherwise. Each line carries its own uncertainty band. How we estimate them.
Contractor overhead and profit applied at 33–43% over direct cost. Data last reviewed 2026-08-23.
What this figure does not include
- Any change to the layout
- This is the defining limit of refacing rather than a footnote. The boxes stay exactly where they are, at exactly the sizes they are. Moving a cabinet, widening one for a new appliance, or turning two small ones into a pan drawer are all impossible without replacing them.
- The condition of the boxes
- Refacing puts new faces on the cabinets you have and does not extend their life. Particleboard boxes swollen under the sink, shelves that have bowed, or a carcass racking out of square are all reasons to price replacement instead — and none of them shows until the doors come off.
- Countertops, sink and appliances
- Refacing does not disturb the countertop, which is one of its practical advantages: an existing stone top can stay. Replacing the top, the sink or the appliances is separate work.
- Painting the cabinets instead
- Spraying the existing doors is a third option that sits below refacing in price and above it in risk, and it depends entirely on what the existing doors are made of. Thermofoil cannot be painted usefully at all. It is a different job and it is not priced here.
- Asbestos and lead beyond the cabinets
- The lead-safe line covers the cabinetry itself in a pre-1978 house. Flooring and mastic from before the eighties can contain asbestos, and that requires testing before anything is lifted.
Questions people actually ask
Is refacing cheaper than replacing cabinets?
It depends entirely on what you would be replacing them with, and the honest comparison is not the one the industry makes. On the same kitchen — 20 doors, 9 drawer fronts — refacing comes to $7,913 in Atlanta. New assembled stock cabinets, fitted, come to $7,963: refacing is 99% of that, a saving of $50 — essentially nothing. Against flat pack it is 109%, meaning it costs more. That ratio moves with the size of the kitchen and with local wages, and it moves the wrong way for small kitchens: refacing is priced per door and new cabinets per linear foot, so a kitchen with few fronts makes refacing look worse against them, not better. Run your own counts in the calculator rather than taking this ratio. Where refacing genuinely wins is higher up: 65% of semi-custom, saving $4,300, and 34% of custom, saving $15,700. Anyone selling refacing compares it against the expensive end, and they are not wrong to — they are just not showing you the other row.
What is the downside of cabinet refacing?
You keep the layout, and that is the one that matters. The boxes stay exactly where they are at exactly the sizes they are, so moving a cabinet, widening one for a dishwasher, or turning two small doors into a pan drawer are all off the table. You also keep the interiors — the shelves, the shelf material, the way the corner cabinet wastes half its space — and you keep whatever life the boxes have left. Refacing a kitchen whose particleboard boxes are swollen under the sink is money spent on the front of something that is failing at the back. The upside is real too: your countertop stays, the plumbing is never touched, and the kitchen keeps working through the three or four days it takes rather than being gone for a fortnight.
Are there hidden costs in refacing?
Three, and this calculator has them as their own lines rather than in the footnotes. New hinges, because new doors are bored for the hinge they were made for and the old ones usually will not fit — barely optional. New drawer boxes, because refacing replaces the drawer front and not the box behind it, so a sagging box gets a beautiful new face and carries on sagging. And new shelves, because nothing inside a cabinet is touched, so new doors can open onto bowed shelves in a finish that matches nothing. Adding all three takes this kitchen from $7,913 to $10,979. There is a fourth in older houses: sanding painted cabinetry in a home built before 1978 is far above the federal lead threshold, which takes it to $8,403.
Is it worth it to reface kitchen cabinets?
Worth it when three things are true: the boxes are sound, the layout already works, and the alternative you were considering is semi-custom or better. Then refacing gets you most of the visible change for 65% of the price and you keep your countertop and your working kitchen. It is not worth it when the boxes are tired, when you have ever wished the layout were different, or when you were only ever going to buy stock cabinets anyway — at 99% of new stock there is no saving to weigh against everything you would be keeping. The test is not the price. It is whether you would still choose this layout if somebody handed you an empty room.
Taken from Google’s “people also ask” results for this search on 23 August 2026, not invented.
Other cost calculators
The first of these are the jobs closest to this one — the ones that turn up in the same quote, or instead of it.
- Cabinet painting cost
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- Countertop cost
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- Hot tub cost
Prices the spa and then what it costs every month to own it, using the electricity price the EIA publishes rather than a guess.
- The full kitchen cabinet refacing cost dataset
Every unit price, every quantity rule and the reasoning behind each estimate, as a plain table.
- How we calculate
The formula, the sources, and an honest account of which parts of the model are weak.